That’s some damn show. I won’t drop any spoilers. Suffice it to say that in the last four episodes everything seemed to be going to hell and I was incensed at the trajectory I saw for the plot. But by the conclusion I was satisfied that there wasn’t a better possible ending. I’ll take a while to digest the whole story. There’s a lot there. Criminals and cops and their girls. But at the end Raylin and Boyd together are the motor that runs the show. They are like the two poles of a magnet. Opposite and linked. And then there’s Ava. Who’s responsible for that disaster? And then there’s just the sheer scope of the mayhem. By the end of the show the killing becomes like a steady rain. I seriously wondered if the last episode would close on nothing left of the cast but body bags in the morgue.

Justified is a very well-made crime drama. The main characters are interesting and in some ways sympathetic. The run of the show is neither too short nor too long to provide a solid entertainment experience. The story runs its course and the potential of the situation like the coal in one of the Harlan County mines is extracted and exhausted.

In a crime story that has both, it’s sometimes difficult to strike the correct balance between drama and comedy. In my opinion Justified manages that balance unusually well. With the large and shifting parade of criminals and lawmen, victims and friends, there were many colorful characters that provided ample opportunities for laughs. But often that laughter was tinged with disgust at the ignorance, greed or stupidity that was the source. And the laughs were often at the expense of the lawmen too. Trying to outsmart idiots sometimes ended up poorly. And Raylin consistently had troubles with his love life. Too often it intersected with his work. And when that happened, his boss Art would call out, “Raylin, would you come in my office and close the door?”

Critiquing entertainment is far from an exact science. Objectivity is not even a theoretical consideration. Why I like Justified so much probably has more to do with me than with the show. And if your tastes are at all different from mine then we could completely disagree on the quality of this TV show. With all of that said, I highly recommend Justified to anyone who likes well written and acted drama with a healthy dose of ironic humor thrown in for leavening. Everything about the show is well done and enjoyable. And probably best of all it has the correct balance. There is a beginning, middle and end. At the end, it was enough. Anymore extracted from these characters will need to be a different chapter in a different place and with a different flavor. Harlan County, Kentucky has been successfully mined and the treasure collected and sold to the consumers. Amen.

Camera Girl and I have polished off the first four seasons of Justified and only have seasons 5 and 6 left. Although a sort of pattern has emerged vis-à-vis the season finale we remain extremely satisfied with the quality of the show and the progression of the story line. Over the course of the first four seasons we’ve really gotten to know Raylin Givens and his friends and family and enemies and their families. We’ve seen some major characters come and go (mostly to the great beyond courtesy of Raylin’s pistol) and we’ve seen Raylin’s personal life undergo several painful dislocations.

And we’ve watched Boyd and Ava Crowder move steadily to the dark side. When I say this, I don’t mean that the shows have gotten a lot more more violent. It’s already at intermittent gang war levels. But what the show is doing is chronicling Boyd’s ascent from small-time gangster to Appalachian mob-boss. Along the way his scruples and humanity are peeled away crime by crime. At each step he’s only doing what he has to to avoid the law or his rivals but eventually you see that nothing good remains. Now I think this is similar to what was done in the series “Breaking Bad.” There a man was driven by circumstance to adopt crime to help his family and finds himself and those around him consumed. The difference being Boyd’s family already was criminal and his only attempt at honest life is pretty much extinguished in season two. The Good/Evil dynamic is more represented by Boyd’s earlier friendship with Raylin. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Raylin and Boyd are two sides of a coin flip. Either might have ended as the other. Probably the show itself is a meditation on why they’ve so far ended up on opposite sides of that very narrow line.

And I don’t want to claim any dramatic depth to the show. It’s entertainment pure and simple. But the characters are engaging and the mixture of action, drama, comedy and suspense is very nicely prepared. What I’m not sure about is whether Raylin Givens will end the show better, worse or the same as he started. He straddles a lot of lines and he seems to be willing to cross those lines when he thinks he has to. I can see that may bring him to a bad end. It’ll be interesting to see where the arc of this story lands him.

For my part I’m interested to see where the relationship between Art and Raylin heads. Art is sort of a surrogate father figure for Raylin. But whether he’ll end up a stern old testament type father who has to sacrifice his son on the altar of the law or the father of the prodigal who is able to welcome him back into the fold, I don’t know. But either way I do hope he gets more time in front of the camera. He’s been limited lately and I want to see him assert some order over the wild west atmosphere of the Harlan County Marshall’s office.

Oh, and for the record, although Raylin has an assortment of fine looking women jumping into bed with him, he certainly has no instinct for avoiding criminals. Then again maybe he isn’t trying. Maybe he thinks they’re more fun and he can always arrest or shoot them if he has to.

Currently we’ve received the first two DVDs for season five. We usually restrict ourselves to two episodes at a sitting. But we’ve been waiting for these disks for several days now and I suspect we’ll binge through both disks by Saturday. Patience is definitely not a virtue when Justified is in your DVD player.

Thanks to the magic of Netflix’ DVD service, I and Mrs. Photog (aka Camera Girl) have been burning through Justified at a goodly clip. We finished Season 2 last Friday and are now barreling along through Season 3 like a meth-head racing to a pawn shop with an ill-gotten Rolex. But that’s a story for another post. Right now, I’m reporting on Season 2 and I’m happy to report that it lives up to Season 1 and maybe even surpasses it too. In Season 1 we met Raylin Givens and his kin and spent the season getting to know the Crowder clan. That was fun.

In Season 2 we meet the Bennetts. The matriarch is Mags Bennett and she has three sons. One of them is the sheriff of Bennett, Kentucky. The other two help Mags run the Bennett store and their thriving weed business. It goes without saying that Raylin has history with the Bennetts and the season builds up to a climactic encounter. Along the way Ray becomes more formally involved with his ex-wife Wynona and Ava becomes Boyd’s girl. Many sub-plots involve all manner of exciting and amusing scenes. Probably the outright funniest is Ray’s boss Art trying to apprehend a geriatric outlaw trying to escape onto a private plane at the airport. Having reached a certain maturity myself I could see the humor of two old men in a foot race that neither can possibly finish. By the finish both are gasping on the ground recovering their breath for the slow stroll back to Art’s waiting car.

Just as an aside, a recurring role, Loretta, is played by 14 year old Kaitlyn Dever, who played youngest daughter Eve to Tim Allen on “Last Man Standing,” another show that I enjoyed until its recent untimely cancellation by social justice network jerks.

Justified is fast becoming my favorite series of all time. And that is saying something. I’ll always have a soft spot for Firefly but if Justified can continue to be as good as it’s been for another season or so I don’t rightly see how I can deny it a place of preference if for no other reason than more hours of enjoyment. It’s really a show that does not disappoint. I know I’m beginning to sound like a paid shill for the network that produced the show but I must say I highly recommend it to anyone who likes crime drama with a heapin’ helpin’ of humor thrown in on top.

There’s not much left on TV for me to watch anymore. I remembered hearing over the last few years from several reviewers who were not progressives that “Justified” was pretty good. Well, last week my Netflix queue was completely empty so I added season one of Justified to my queue. With some trepidation, photog and camera-girl settled in this week and watched the first two disks. And eight or nine episodes into the season we still haven’t seen a bad show. It’s actually very good. Timothy Olyphant is the protagonist playing a US Marshall named Raylan Givens. He’s been sent back to his home state of Kentucky after shooting a drug lord in Miami under questionable circumstances. This puts him in contact with his family, friends, associates and enemies. And the amount of overlap between all of these categories in the episodes I’ve seen is quite remarkable. And here we run into the expected stereotyping of the Appalachians. For instance, Ray’s father is married to Aunt Helen. I’m not far enough into the story yet but it appears she was Aunt Helen before she was married to Ray’s father Arlo. So, the incest and inbreeding jokes can’t be far off. Also, one of Ray’s old friends from his time as a coal miner is now a bank robber who dabbles in white supremacy and shoulder launched rockets.

Needless to say, Ray’s personal and professional lives become extremely entangled and pretty early on he finds himself sleeping with a woman he shouldn’t be. He had been investigating her for shooting and killing her husband. Subsequently she is his witness in his shooting of her brother in law. Add into the mix that the brother in law is also that coal miner / bank robber friend of Ray’s and it starts getting extremely complicated and confusing. Also, Ray’s father is a criminal. Ray’s ex-wife is married to a man in hock to mobsters and Ray’s boss is starting to think he’s unstable. Oh, and the investigation into that drug lord he shot is getting complicated by all the other guys Ray’s been shooting since he got to Kentucky. And finally, the drug lord’s friends really, really want Ray dead. It’s a really fun show.

I’m only about half way through season one and so it’s hard to say where this will all be by season six but so far this is a crime drama that’s well written, filled with action and includes characters that while far from unconflicted are quite sympathetic for the audience. Timothy Olyphant is the obvious star but the supporting cast is quite strong and fun to watch and listen to. I especially enjoy Nick Searcy as Ray’s boss, Art Mullen. He brings a dry wit and long suffering attitude to the job of overseeing Ray’s overcomplicated work-life balance.

So, that’s my first installment. I will be watching a bunch more of these in the next few weeks and will give an update on my recommendation. But so far, I’d have to say watching Justified is definitely justified.